Throughout his long, illustrious career, Steve Morse has played with some of the best. But even before he was a star, he was jamming with legends.
The former Kansas and Dixie Dregs man is Deep Purple's longest-serving guitarist, replacing Ritchie Blackmore, and he's also played with Lynyrd Skynyrd, who pulled him out of retirement. More recently, he has tapped up Eric Johnson and Steve Petrucci for his first Steve Morse Band album in 16 years. As evidence suggests, he's no stranger to locking his fretboard with other virtuosos.
The Ohio-born guitarist formed one of his first bands, the Dixie Grit, with bassist Andy West after enrolling at the Academy of Richmond County. They were largely a vehicle for Led Zeppelin and Cream covers, but the band's life was cut short when Morse was expelled for refusing to cut his hair.
Later, he moved to study at the University of Miami School of Music, which presumably had slightly less stringent fashion policies. It was there that he'd form Dixie Dregs, having reunited with West, but they weren't the only students there who would go on to big things. Hiram Bullock, who played bass and later keyboards in the band that would become Dregs went on to join David Letterman's band. And there were two significant others.
“One of my most treasured memories is sitting with Pat [Metheny],” he says in conversation with Jordi Pinyol (see video below). “I had a room that was fairly quiet because they installed air conditioning in the dormitory building. He came over to the dorm, and I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder, this big TEAC with 10-inch reels.
“So I said, ‘Come on over and let's jam,’ and he was as good as you could imagine. He was a child prodigy.”
The pair had played together before, but it was that jam that really compounded, in Morse’s mind, that the future 20-time Grammy winner was a cut above the rest.
“I said, ‘Let's just jam without any songs, just totally free form. I'll play something. You play something. Let's see if we can play something together, and let's keep changing it up,’” Morse remembers. “And we did that, listening to each other the whole time. I love that recording. That was wonderful.”
Jaco Pastorius, the future Weather Report and Trio of Doom bassist (his short-lived, jazz-fusion trio with John McLaughlin and Tony Williams) was also among the university's impressive cast of students. The Jaco Morse knew was supremely studious and made complex music look easy to play.
“Jaco would come to our rehearsals for the band that became the Dregs,” Morse reveals. “Sometimes he would say, ‘Hey man, I got a chart for you guys.’
“I went to jam with him one time at his place up in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. And he was renting an apartment, a little tiny cottage house right on the ocean up in North Lauderdale. He was so hyper he said, ‘Before we jam, man, we gotta jog. I’ve got too much energy.’ I wasn’t a jogger!
“It was a real workout,” he laughs. “And I go, ‘Let's get our feet washed off and let's go play.’ He said, ‘No, no, no, man. Did you see those waves? We've got to body surf.’”
After body surfing and a shower, the pair eventually get down to playing, “and that was the only time I could get him to sit down long enough to jam!”
These days, Morse is busy working his farm for most of the day, but the “student of evertyhing” believes fixing tractors and flying planes – there’s a runway on his farm too, of course – makes him more creative. It’s never a dull day in Steve Morse’s life.
